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What was he angry about? The fact he couldn’t juggle, the fact I’d tricked him, or something else? I circled around behind him. His damp shirt clung to his smooth back, leaving little to the imagination. It was all too easy to imagine licking up his spine and making him arch for more… Would he fight me between the sheets too? I hoped so. “Arin, you don’t really want to know how it’s done.”
“But I do.” He glanced over his shoulder, glare spearing into me.
I stepped close, against his body, gathered the two juggling balls in my right hand, and reached around his waist to hand them over. “The magic is not in the trick.” He took the balls, freeing my hand. I laid it gently on his hip, testing for any resistance. “The magic is in the feeling.”
“Magic doesn’t exist.”
“Wrong again. Magic is the surprise, the wonder, amazement. This world is dark enough, it needs a little magic to light the way.”
He turned his head and now my mouth was at his ear and my hands on his hips, our bodies once more pressed close. Butterflies danced low, stuttering my breath. I didn’t know Arin, not who he truly was behind his thin acts. I’d tried to put the pieces of his puzzle together but most didn’t fit. He didn’t know me, either. We were two strangers, both playing games, but I liked our games, and so did he. So here we were, the prince and the fool, standing far too close where anyone might stumble upon us, my breath at his ear, my touch branding his skin, while his heart raced and his blood quickened.
“Tell me how it was done, Lark,” he said again, voice gruff with the order.
He couldn’t stand not knowing, or rather, he knew it to be lies, and that infuriated him—my prince of hearts, wearing his heart on his sleeve. “No.” If he knew, he’d think he’d won, but deep inside, he’d lose the magic. It was better just to believe.
“Fine. Don’t tell me. But teach me how to juggle.”
“That, I can do.” I slid my hands along his warm forearms—his sleeves rolled up—over his wrists, to his hands. “You need to be ahead of the balls, not behind them.” My chin brushed his jaw, scratching over rough stubble. “Master them or they will master you.”
“They’re just balls.” Arin chuckled.
“Respect the balls.”
He laughed, then caught my raised eyebrow in his over-the-shoulder glance. “You’re serious.”
“Do you want to learn or not?”
He sobered and shifted on his feet, for which I had the fortunate pleasure of having his ass rub my crotch.
“Fine.” He raised the balls again. “Master the balls,” he repeated.
I refrained from suggesting I might master his balls later, despite it being on the tip of my tongue. “Measure their weight,” I told him, freeing his hands so I could bracket his hips again and hold him in place. “You need to give yourself time to catch and release. Throw them higher to begin with.”
He threw the balls and immediately, all three escaped him. His laugh filled the library and my heart. At least hewaslaughing. When I’d arrived, he’d looked as though he’d been ready to tear the library to pieces.
I let him go to retrieve the balls, and when he returned, he turned his back once more. “Well?” he asked, inviting my touch.
I slotted myself close again, resting my hands on his firm waist. This was surely foreplay. And as he prepared to launch the balls again, I breathed the ghost of a kiss on the back of his neck. Not even a kiss, more the promise of one. Arin stilled. He sucked in a breath and tried admirably to refocus on the task of juggling.
When he tossed the balls again, he lunged from my grasp and managed a whole three cycles before sending the balls flying. “Yes! Did you see?! I had it!” He tracked down the balls and hurried back. “Again, Lark.”
“Very well.”
This time, when I tucked myself close, I eased a thigh astride his and skimmed a kiss lower, tasting his saltiness mixed with the scent of clean linen and the flower meadows.
A tremor shivered through him. “I do believe you are deliberately distracting me.”
“Never.” With that, I tilted my hips and dug my cock against his firm ass, leaving him in no doubt.
He gave a small, pained moan. A sound that begged for more. “Lark—”
I skimmed my hand around his right hip, stroked down the front of his trousers, and grasped his rapidly hardening dick through the fabric. “How long has it been since someone pleasured you?” I whispered, easing my fingers around as much of his length as his trousers allowed.
He sighed through his nose and dropped his head back against my shoulder. “Too long.”
Years, then. Probably before I’d arrived and he’d shut himself away. Years, starved of pleasure, except his hand. But that could never be the same. Four years was too long. He was going to spill right here for me, right into my palm, and neither of us was leaving this library until that happened. The sound that growled out of me had his dick twitching in my grip.
A door clanged. Footfalls sounded, at a distance, somewhere near the front of the library.
